Today, I learned from the press the death of Shere Hite, the pioneering feminist, known for her research on female sexuality, she has died at the age of 77. She was best known for The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, which has sold more than 50m copies since publication in 1976. I had never seen a picture of her, except this day, on the Internet with the media coverage of her disappearance. But I read her report very early on, when I was a teenager, and it changed a woman's life, a young woman's life. It was my mother who had this book, which I thought was quite big, and surprising, whereas in our French schools, there was absolutely nothing written or transmitted, no education on the subject. Besides, my friends, in middle school, didn't even know who this scientist was, this very famous woman in the United States, and absolutely nothing about women’s sexuality. Thanks to my mother, who is a woman of readings, I had access very early to this work, which obviously opened up to me as a certain autonomy and criticism of other works on female sexuality, often written by men, and psychologists or psychoanalysts, who didn't know much, and certainly absolutely nothing, about women, but were graciously paid and awarded medals for their works, some of which destroyed the construction of a fulfilled female sexuality (I'm thinking about Freud who did well damage, and unfortunately, is still well recommended by men and women) So this article to quote that of the Guardian, in English, because it allows to know in a few lines who was this woman, and me, I had access, for my first time to a face on this big book from my teenage years, in the family library. And yes, sometimes we are readers of other people's words, and the image doesn't matter, there are the words that lead to pleasure, and here, it's a question of female orgasm. She was also a powerful voice in the middle of a barren desert. In reality, it's to my mother that I owe this insight in making different readings available to her daughters, what an advance, and what a generosity !
(I therefore chose photographs that I found interesting and I modified the color, with a montage with the title of his book. The photography in pajamas is very glamorous, finally we can (not too late) take an interest in the faces of an author, and discover, that she was a beautiful woman, in the very "American actress" spirit iconic)
❥
The pioneering feminist Shere Hite, known for her research on female sexuality, has died at the age of 77. She was best known for The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, which has sold more than 50m copies since publication in 1976. Based on the views of 3,500 women, it challenged male assumptions about sex by revealing that many women were not stimulated by sexual penetration. It also encouraged women to take control of their sex lives. It was dismissed as “anti-male” and dubbed the Hate Report by Playboy. Shere Hite: 'We need to make a film about me' Read more “I was saying that penetration didn’t do anything for women and that got some people terribly upset,” she told the Guardian in 2011. She added: “I was the only sex researcher at that time who was feminist. I tried to extend the idea of sexual activity to female orgasm and masturbation.” Hite’s husband, Paul Sullivan, confirmed that she had died at their home in Tottenham, north London, on Wednesday. Hite was born in the socially conservative US state of Missouri, to her 16-year-old mother, and was raised by her grandparents. While doing postgraduate research at Columbia University she posed nude in an advert for an Olivetti typewriter in the early 1970s. When the advert appeared in Playboy under the caption: “The typewriter so smart, she doesn’t have to be,” she backed protests against it. Sustained criticism of her in the US, much of it highly personalised, led Hite to renounce her US citizenship in 1995. She was married for 14 years to the German pianist Friedrich Höricke before the couple divorced in 1999. She lived all over Europe before settling in north London with her second husband, Paul Sullivan. The writer Julie Bindel, who interviewed Hite in 2011 and stayed in touch afterwards, told the Guardian she had been suffering from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Bindel said: “Her work was groundbreaking – in many ways she began the real sexual revolution for women in the 1970s after the abject failure of the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s. In the 60s, women didn’t ever feel that they had the right to sexual pleasure. Shere Hite put women’s sexual pleasure first and foremost for the first time ever. “She centred women’s experiences as opposed to seeing men as the default position and women as secondary. That really spoke to a lot of women about their own bodies, their own sexual liberation and sexual pleasure.”
Matthew Weaver
(The Guardian) Thu 10 Sep 2020 17.30 BST
Matthew Weaver (The Guardian) Thu 10 Sep 2020 17.30 BST
❥
O Relatório Hite, publicado em 1976 nos EUA e em 1979 em Portugal, foi, em si, uma revolução. Nunca ninguém tinha pensado, perguntado, falado ou escrito assim sobre a sexualidade feminina, o orgasmo, o clitóris ou a masturbação. Shere Hite fê-lo. E revolucionou a forma de pensar o prazer feminino. O livro foi reeditado este ano por cá e nós pedimos-lhe esta entrevista. As respostas chegaram finalmente. Entrevista de Catarina Pires | Fotografia de Getty Images O questionário que deu origem ao Relatório Hite, reeditado este ano pela Bertrand com o título O Relatório Hite – Um Profundo Estudo Sobre Sexualidade Feminina, tinha 58 perguntas, as primeiras onze sobre orgasmo, as formas de o atingir, as sensações que provoca, a importância que assume, outras tantas, ou mais, dedicadas à masturbação, mas também ao sexo oral – fellatio e cunnilingus – e anal. Os relacionamentos emocionais não foram deixados de fora, nas suas diversas formas, nem a forma de viver o sexo nos vários estádios da vida, da infância à velhice. As perguntas abrangiam tanto relações heterossexuais como homossexuais e bissexuais e procuravam enquadrar as respostas do ponto de vista cultural, intelectual, social e político. Aos 76 anos, Shere Hite considera que, apesar do muito que tem sido conquistado, a revolução sexual continua por fazer, que o feminismo em parte implodiu-se e que nunca é tarde para o sexo. Mais de três mil mulheres responderam, com uma honestidade e detalhe por vezes desconcertante, e foi dessas respostas que nasceu o Relatório Hite, uma pedrada no charco, que, segundo a autora, foi mal recebido, sobretudo pelos homens do seu país, que se “sentiram atacados na sua virilidade”. Afinal, ao longo das mais de 500 páginas do livro, a conclusão a que se chega é que a penetração não é assim tão importante para o prazer feminino. Seja como for, o livro vendeu mais de 50 milhões de cópias, foi traduzido em várias línguas e a sua autora, Shere Hite, nascida no Missouri, feminista, licenciada em História pela Universidade de Columbia, que chegou a posar nua para a Playboy para pagar a faculdade, tornou-se o nome incontornável do feminismo e da sexologia. Aos 76 anos, considera que, apesar do muito que tem sido conquistado, a revolução sexual continua por fazer, que o feminismo em parte implodiu-se e que nunca é tarde para o sexo.
Entrevista de Catarina Pires por DN Life (17/10/2019)
